Monday, September 27, 2004

A critic of declining standards in the National Health Service died after being given a large overdose of iron by a hospital doctor who did not read the instructions on the drug's label properly.

Carys Pugh, 63, a former president of a patients' association in Wales, was taken to casualty at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital after the blunder turned her skin brown and "saturated" her liver with iron....

When her daughter, Hawys Pugh, complained to the hospital authorities about what had gone wrong she was told that the doctor who had carried out the routine infusion for suspected anaemia had found the instructions difficult to decipher and that he had only read half of them.

"They told me that because the text was in two columns instead of one, the doctor just read the section on how much to give, but didn't bother reading the rest which said over what duration it should be given"...

Minutes taken of a meeting between Miss Pugh and executives from the Pontypridd and Rhondda NHS Trust while her mother was alive confirm that the officials blamed the tragedy on the leaflet accompanying the drug...

The officials dismissed Miss Pugh's concerns ... and refused to name the doctor concerned, insisting that the trust had a "no blame" culture...